A second Ontario Progressive Conservative candidate accused of having used stolen customer lists from a private toll highway said Wednesday he never received the 407 data, and would have no need for it anyway.

Harjit Jaswal also denied working with a controversial political organizer, prompting that man to produce a written agreement that, if authentic, contradicts him.

In an exclusive interview set up by party officials, Jaswal said he recruited members to support his bid for the PC nomination in Brampton Centre by old-fashioned door-knocking and networking, not employing an outside database.

He denied as well playing any part in a smear campaign against one of his rivals for the nomination using a leaked police arrest report.

Jaswal said organizer Snover Dhillon not only didn’t work on his campaign, but returned $10,000 the candidate paid him for unrelated consulting on his real-estate business.

The whole controversy has been manufactured by the media, he charged.

“I spent the day yesterday over here too,” said Jaswal at a meeting in the office of Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton. “ I am getting calls from all the media. It is distracting me from my goal. It is hurting me and my party.”

The campaign for the June 7 election has been repeatedly sidetracked by the 407 controversy.

As first documented by the National Post, the private toll road says it was the victim of an “internal theft” of information on 60,000 customers, news that came the same day that PC candidate Simmer Sandhu quit as the Tories’ Brampton East candidate. Sandhu worked at 407 until February, but says any allegations against him are “baseless.”

York Region police and Elections Ontario are investigating.

A file seen by the Post that appears to contain the pilfered customer lists says it was “last saved” by D-Media, a Dhillon company.

The Liberal party has quoted the organizer as saying that Sandhu, another client, passed on the stolen data to Jaswal. That never happened, the candidate stressed Wednesday.

But part of his story was contradicted by Dhillon, who said he was hired to run Jaswal’s campaign – and produced a contract as alleged evidence of the arrangement.

Snover DhillonFacebook

The “consulting agreement” between Jaswal and the Dhillon Group – which Dhillon scanned and emailed to the Post – is headed “For Brampton Centre Campaign,” and dated November 23, 2016. Its authenticity could not be independently verified by the Post.

Jaswal charged through a party official that the agreement was made-up by Dhillon, noting that key parts of it are in a different font than the rest. Dhillon says the form was downloaded from an online service, and the specifics added in.

In the doucment, Dhillon, also known by the first name Sam, agrees to provide various services including “membership sign up and management of those responsible to sign up memberships shall report back to Sam Dhillon.”

The document mentions a flat fee of $15,000, including a $10,000 deposit.

Dhillon said in an interview Wednesday he kept the deposit, though he did refund some additional money that Jaswal paid him for work not completed.

He said Jaswal “never canceled the contract,” just stopped taking his calls after some negative media reports about the organizer earlier this spring.

Dhillon, who quit the party last month, is a controversial figure in Tory circles, hiring himself out to would-be candidates to help them win PC nominations. Many of those elections over the last year and a half ended in dispute, with charges of membership fraud and ballot stuffing.

Signing up people as party members and supporters – work that might have been made easier by having access to a company’s client database – is crucial to winning nominations.

He did not work for me, he almost worked for me

Dhillon says he did nothing wrong, and never knew the list of names, addresses and phone numbers he received from one candidate originated at the 407.

Regardless, Jaswal said the two of them never collaborated on politics. Though he hired Dhillon as a business consultant, no work was done and the deposit returned.

“He did not work for me, he almost worked for me.”

Jaswal said he ended the deal after learning that Dhillon has not been pardoned for two separate 2011 fraud convictions, and had been fined by regulatory agencies overseeing mortgage and real-estate brokers.

As for the 407 data, he said it would be of little use to him, and noted that companies catering to the telemarketing industry legally sell call lists for not much more than $200.

Jaswal said he has no idea who mailed out packages with copies of a Peel Region police arrest report mentioning another contender for the Brampton Centre nomination. The PCs disqualified that person just before the nomination vote.

Peel police originally investigated the leak, then passed the case on to Toronto police after determining one of its employees had accessed the document. The probe is ongoing.

Jaswal said police investigators “never came to me.”

(Modified May 24 to add Jaswal claim that contract was not authentic.)

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